CITY Councilman Allan Jennings violated the council’s own rules when he bought $22,558 worth of furniture last year – but no one took action because the council’s $45.8 million budget has never been audited by the comptroller.

Guidelines issued by council Speaker Gifford Miller on March 25, 2002, require that members planning to spend $2,500 or more on furniture and office equipment have to first check the prices at the city’s general-services agency, which has discount rates.

But Queens Councilman Jennings, who is under investigation on sexual-harassment charges, skipped that step when he filled a $22,558 order at Arenson Office Furnishings on May 22, 2002.

“This furniture order was not approved or paid for by this agency,” said Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

A Jennings spokesman pointed out that no one objected when Jennings submitted the bill. “The speaker has to approve any purchase over $2,500,” the spokesman said. “He approved that purchase.”

But Fred Baldassaro, a Miller spokesman, said Jennings is an independently elected official given wide latitude in choosing how to spend his annual budget of $241,700.

“Council member Jennings will have to justify how he spends his allotted money to his constituents and, in the end, the taxpayers are allowed to make their own judgment,” Baldassaro said.

The city comptroller is required by law to audit every city agency at least once every four years. But no comptroller has ever dug into the council’s books.

Now might be the time to set the precedent.

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Mayor Bloomberg has criticized council officials for spending $15,000 on a private firm to investigate allegations of sexual harassment against Councilman Jennings.

“I don’t know why they’re spending city money on an outside investigatory agency,” Bloomberg said. “We have the Department of Investigation that certainly could do the investigation.”

But there wasn’t a peep out of the mayor when his own Housing Development Corp. paid $437,139 last year to Debevoise & Plimpton, one of the city’s biggest law firms, to help clean up the mess around Russell Harding.

Harding was accused of ripping off $250,000 in expenses while serving as HDC president in the Giuliani administration.

An HDC spokesman claimed the law firm was needed to “establish different policies and procedures to make sure this type of thing didn’t happen again.”